Mladic begins genocide trial defence

APAn image taken from a video shows former Bosnian Serb army commander General Ratko Mladic . Picture: CTY, Via Associated Press Television

The Hague, Netherlands -

Bosnian Serb ex-army chief Ratko Mladic's defence case opened at the Yugoslav war crimes court on Monday, with one of his officers insisting his forces acted in self defence during the bloody siege of Sarajevo.

The officer, Mile Sladoje, told the three-judge panel at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where Mladic faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, that his troops "never were snipers" during the notorious 1990s siege in which 10 000 people died.

"There were standing orders, fire could only be returned in response to enemy fire," said Sladoje, an assistant logistics commander in the Bosnian Serb Army, who was saluted by Mladic as he walked into the courtroom.

Dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia", Mladic, 72, faces 11 charges ranging from hostage-taking to genocide for his role in Bosnia's brutal 1992-95 conflict following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

A Bosnian Muslim woman, survivor of Srebrenica 1995 massacre, mourns near the body caskets of her relatives at a memorial cemetery in the village of Potocari near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 2013. Picture: ELVIS BARUKCICAFP

Around 100 000 people were killed and 2.2 million others left homeless in the brutal conflict which included some of the worst atrocities committed on European soil since World War II.

Mladic is charged with involvement in the slaughter of almost 8 000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995 and the 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

He is accused of waging a "campaign of terror" against Sarajevo's civilians by indiscriminate shelling and employing snipers during the siege, in which thousands of civilians died.

But Sladoje, referring to an incident in Sarajevo when a teenage girl was shot by a sniper, denied there were snipers among his troops or that they had sniper weapons.

"We had normal infantry weapons, we never had snipers or such rifles," Sladoje told the judges.

At Srebrenica, Mladic's forces are accused of overrunning lightly armed Dutch UN troops protecting the supposedly safe enclave, before murdering the men and boys and dumping their bodies into mass graves.

He has also been charged for taking hostage a group of over 200 United Nations peacekeepers during the conflict, keeping them in strategic locations as "human shields" against NATO air strikes.

Presiding Judge Alphons Orie has given Mladic's lawyers 207 hours to question witnesses -- the same amount of time given to the prosecution, who finished their case earlier this year, the ICTY said in a statement.

There was no restriction on the number of witnesses defence lawyers could call, it added.

Mladic was arrested in Serbia and transferred to the ICTY in 2011.

Known for his outbursts in court, he has denied the charges. He faces life in prison if convicted.

In January, he refused to testify at the trial of Radovan Karadzic, his political counterpart at the time, repeatedly dismissing the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal as "satanic".

Karadzic had hoped Mladic would testify that they did not agree or plan to expel Muslims or Croats from areas under Serb control.

The two men could have been tried together had they been arrested around the same time. But Karadzic was arrested in July 2008 and Mladic in May 2011.

Last month, the ICTY upheld the charges against Mladic in a hearing to see if there was enough evidence to continue trying him after prosecutors closed their case.

Judge Orie ruled then that Mladic "had a case to answer on all counts of the indictment". - AFP

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